Thursday, August 6, 2015

Moon Taxi – A Band Review

We watched at least a portion of the performance of each band streamed from Lollapalooza 2015. The Chicago festival occurred the weekend before Outside Lands in San Francisco, so the streaming provided an opportunity to scout bands scheduled for both festivals. We are now better prepared for Outside Lands.

The Lollapalooza streams included a number of enjoyable shows. But the performance we enjoyed most was by a band that will not be in San Francisco. The band was Moon Taxi. Their sound has features that bring Kings of Leon to mind, but Moon Taxi stands on its own. The guitar in songs like “Morocco” provides evidence of the accuracy of that conclusion.

When the Moon Taxi steam began, the plan was to listen to a song or two and then switch to one of the other Lollapalooza channels. The switch never occurred. We were hooked after listening to the opener – “Year Zero,” which is a 2015 release - and stayed through the final song – “Running Wild.” During the performance, Moon Taxi was joined by Nick Petricca (Walk the Moon) in a cover of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” (Tears for Fears). The collaboration was unrehearsed, which led to a couple of minor hiccups at the start. But overall, the collaboration was solid and it provided positve insights into the personality and chemistry of Moon Taxi.

Moon Taxi is from Nashville, Tennessee. They visited San Francisco late last year, but we missed them. That won’t be repeated. The members of Moon Taxi are Trevor Terndrup (vocals, guitar), Tommy Putnam (bass), Spencer Thomson (guitar, programming), Tyler Ritter (drums) and Wes Bailey (keys).